MS Mus. 1813/2/1

Overall, the Directors' series retains more or less the same arrangement as at the point of acquisition. Most of the intervention that has been required in this series has been made below sub-series level. However, its arrangement as a single series, though Boosey & Hawkes', is relatively artificial in any case, since it is composed mostly of parts, or remnants, of the business files of various individual directors of Boosey & Hawkes, and its contents therefore have their origins in different, distinct offices or departments.

The sub-series entitled 'Special letters' (MS Mus. 1813/2/1/268-285), comprising correspondence with those figures in the musical world with whom Boosey & Hawkes considered their association most important, is especially artificial in composition: it is more a collection than an archive. Its contents do not have their origin in a single office; rather, they were selected item by item, extracted from their original files, and reassembled in new files that were arranged alphabetically by correspondent. This occurred at some point after the records ceased to be current (no earlier than 1975) but before their acquisition by the British Library in 2016: possibly around the year 2003, the date engraved into the boxes in which they arrived at the British Library.

The prominence of the correspondents' names is the single organising principle of this new, more artificial sub-series, not the business, date or recipient of the correspondence. In other words, the letters' arrangement no longer reflects the administrative purpose of their creation. Even within single files, the dates of the creation of the material may span most of the twentieth century, and the material may originate from the offices of various different directors and departments. In some cases this includes Erwin Stein, whose papers are otherwise unrepresented in the Boosey & Hawkes archive (MS Mus. 1813).

This sub-series also incorporates the contents of a single box that was found under the currently-uncatalogued 'Operations' series (anticipated reference MS Mus. 1813/2/2). A more detailed explanation is given in the 'Arrangement' field of the sub-series level record for MS Mus. 1813/2/1/268-285.

Meanwhile, sub-series MS Mus. 1813/2/1/286-301, papers concerning Igor Stravinsky, did not originally belong to the Directors' series at acquisition, originally forming an independent series of two boxes (former internal references MIS 1 and MIS 2). Its incorporation into this series is explained in more detail in the sub-series level description for MS Mus. 1813/2/1/286-301.